I was giving Christmas a little thought from the perspective of presents received by a little boy in Kentucky during the late Forties.  Yes, I was trying to recall some of my early Christmas memories.  It is very interesting to me that, for the time and effort we spend choosing presents, they do not rank high in my memories.  My earliest memories of Christmas are while we were living in Louisville.  The time would have been around 1949 or so.  

We lived on Grade Lane, adjacent to Standiford Field, now the major airport serving Louisville.  I have this faint memory of lying in my bed, looking out the front window of our home at snow falling around the yard light.  I have no recollection of any presents, just a warm bed watching it snow.  I guess even today being safe and warm is a great gift for a child.

Later in life I learned that it was very important for a present to be properly wrapped.  I learned that from my mother.  I also learned that if you were not good at wrapping it was better if you enlisted the aid of others to do the wrapping.  I learned that from my Dad.  He always disappeared when the wrapping paper came out.  We didn’t have those cute little bags or stick-on bows.  

Christmas memories include candy making and candy eating at my Great Aunt Kate’s home.  Aunt Kate, as a child in Kentucky, had learned the fine art of candy making, mostly fudge.  Aunt Kate had some secret ingredients that she used.  The secret ingredients made her kitchen smell wonderful; they made it smell like a special Kentucky tradition was being honored in the candy making.  Aunt Kate was always cheerful when we visited, and that cheerfulness, the aroma of the kitchen, and the taste of candy left a very lasting memory.  

Christmas trees were not bought; they were cut!  Members of my family had lived on the same farm for well over 100 years and for some reason the best Christmas trees never grew close to the house, they grew on the back of the farm.  Four-wheel drive trucks were not common, and ATVs didn’t exist.  Operating tractors on frozen ground had its hazards, so fetching a Christmas tree was something you did on foot.  Taking a long walk with family and enjoying the smell of a fresh cut cedar made for lasting memories.  

My memories include the gifts I wanted but never received.  Little boys sometimes want things that just don’t make sense.  It didn’t have to make sense.  Santa didn’t have to bring it either, and he didn’t.  I have vivid memories of the electric train that Santa brought to my brothers and me. This set brought many long hours of play and fantasy as the “Engineer” of the railroad as well as a few crashes and lessons in putting our toys up.  The train lived in its special box.

The train disappeared in the seventies, but the box it lived in when it was put up continues to bring back Christmas Memories.  That box was a special box.  My Dad brought it home from work.  It is a wooden box used to ship material to the quarry Dad operated.  

That old wooden box that once held dynamite, the one that had also held the train, brings back many great memories of Christmases passed.  It is not the box that I cherish but the memories that now fill it, “Memories of a little boy’s Christmases.”

Merry Christmas!